Kickstarter

Inspired in part, by Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the contemporary opera Double Blind Sided promises to be a rare and exhilarating evening of total theatre where Missouri-based composer, Robert Fruehwald, has created emotionally moving music for Indiana-based poet G.B. Waldschmidt’s witty libretto, creating a non-linear montage of anachronistic scenes connecting Kafka’s novel, Weimar Germany’s slide into Nazism, the Vietnam War, and current economic and political events.

Kafka's novel, published posthumously in 1925, tells of the trial of Josef K by a secret judicial system of multiple layers of judges, lawyers, and friends of the court, all of whom must be courted endlessly. No direct charges are ever levied and only indirect approaches are deemed helpful. Frustrated by the bureaucratic maze of non-answers, Josef K flaunts the non-process and is ultimately executed. From "The Trial" comes the term “Kafkaesque” which neatly encapsulates the post-modern condition. In post-9/11 security state, through the PATRIOT Act and other concessions, the trials and tribulations of Josef K as imagined by Kafka have gone beyond the realm of metaphoric satire and have become a very real possibility. "Double Blind Sided" explores Kafka’s memes that continue to resonate in the 21st century.

The World Premiere of DBS, directed by Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Paul Zmolek with vocal direction by Diana Livingston Friedley, will be May 22-25, 2013 at the Rogers Black Box Theater in Pocatello, ID.  Nine singer/performers and four wind instrumentalists conducted by Julie Sorensen will add to the electronic score.